Jason Brudereck: These days, we're all targets

Something must have seemed too good to be true, but a Sinking Spring man apparently forgot the rest of that adage.

He was told by phone that he'd won $450,000 in a contest but that he had to wire 10 percent of the winnings to claim the rest. In short order, the man gave away $45,000 but got nothing in return, police warned last week.

Scams and identity theft problems pop up from time to time and I have always been fairly confident I will not be a target because I am careful.

Of course, that was before I learned that shopping at Target would actually transform you into the name of the store.

I lucked out on the Target fiasco by finishing my Christmas shopping the exact day before the data breach occurred at Target stores from Nov. 27 to Dec. 15. And yes, I am not-so-subtly bragging about finishing my shopping before Thanksgiving.

Then, on Saturday, I found myself one click away from being a scam victim.

I received an email - in my private, secret, never-spammed email account - stating I owed more than $500 in back utility bills.

It sounded too bad to be true, so I figured it probably wasn't, but I stared at my computer screen for a second with my mouse positioned over the beckoning "click here to learn more" portion of the email.

If I had clicked, I could have made my computer and my identity vulnerable to all kinds of problems.

It would have been akin to driving into a strange neighborhood and then going for a walk while leaving the car behind with the windows down and the keys in the ignition.

Luckily, I recognized a few immediate red flags, including that the total owed was missing a digit: "$559.7."

The email used the name of a legitimate utility company, but by hovering over the "click here" portion, the mouse revealed an address with the phrase "thai" in it.

I went to a web service that looks up website addresses and found the "thai" site was, sure enough, registered in Thailand.

This scam attempt was the closest I have ever been to spending money in Thailand, unless you count dining at the wonderful Thai Cuisine in Muhlenberg Township.

The food at that restaurant, by the way, is almost too good to be true, but it's legit.

But those lottery phone scams aren't, and neither are the utility bill email ones.